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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947318">This Is the Story of a Teenager With a Sword</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot'>WhyWhyNot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There Are No Fairies In Those Tales [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans Series - Wildbow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:48:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,121</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Taylor Hebert goes on a quest to rescue children from a dragon.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There Are No Fairies In Those Tales [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/gifts">Gerbilfriend</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor doesn’t want to go home.</p><p>She should be at the Docks with Dad, learning his work as a Rat-Catcher, but never quite managed to play the songs that would let her lure rodents away from the ships, and since Mom died, Dad hasn’t really been teaching her. She doesn’t think he'll even notice her absence.</p><p>Taylor lost her pipe today, and a part of her thinks Dad will be angry, but another, larger one is scared he won’t care, and she doesn’t want to go home and find out.</p><p>The waitress from the inn got sick and Melanie, the innkeeper, told Taylor she would pay her to take her place until she got back on her feet. Maybe she can use the money to get a new pipe before Dad notices the loss of the last one.</p><p>The work is tiring, and a few men bothered her at the start, but Melanie made it clear she wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior, and Taylor gets to overhear stories from travelers.</p><p>“…the dragon, at Cawthorn?” says one of them, and Taylor focuses on him, because it sounds like bad news. “Keeps children there, God knows what for.”</p><p>“God, or the Devil,” says another man, and Taylor has to suppress a wince.</p><p>She knows of Ahane Kenta and his men, of course. She’s seen the distrust toward anyone who hails from the Far East, the assumption that they are working for them. She’s aware of his tendency to take people away, especially women, lost a friend to him that way.</p><p>She’s heard that he can turn into a dragon, that he becomes stronger the longer he is fought.</p><p>The worst part, Taylor thinks later, after she’s gotten back home to a father who barely talked to her, is that no one will dare go against the Dragon himself.</p><p>No one will come for the children.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The thing is, Taylor is useless here.</p><p>She’s a shit Rat-Catcher. She’s lost any chance to ever be accepted at the University when Mom died. Dad probably wouldn’t even notice it if she left. Even her temporary work as Melanie’s waitress could easily be taken on by another girl, like Madison, or Sierra.</p><p>She’s not doing anything with herself. Not doing any good to anyone.</p><p>Taylor has thought about the children in Cawthorn the last few days. She’s thought about them a lot. </p><p>No one is coming to save them. </p><p>Someone should. Someone <em>has to</em>. </p><p>Taylor fills a bag with bread and dried fruits from the pantry, a blanket for if nights get cold, a lighter, a map they got from a captain after chasing the rats from his ship, and the biggest knife she can finds. After some hesitations, she also takes a few candles, and a small whetstone. She hides the money she earned at the inn inside the lining of her coat. </p><p>She writes a message to Dad and leave it on the table. </p><p>Taylor is not a hero.</p><p>But the thing is, Taylor is useless here.</p><p>And someone has to do <em>something</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A week into her journey, Taylor meets a boy.</p><p>So far, things have been… Calm. She hasn’t run into anything or anyone dangerous, and her main problem has been water, and she’s solved it by buying a canteen to a group of travelers, and filling it every time she can find a stream.</p><p>If she’s reading the map right, she should be about halfway.</p><p>The boy is alone, and crying.</p><p>“Are you lost? Do you need help?” Taylor asks.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The boy’s name is Theo, and his problem isn’t that he’s lost, but that he has nowhere to go. Upon learning that Taylor is traveling alone, he decides to accompany her for safety, since he doesn’t actually have any better plan.</p><p>Taylor feels obligated to inform him that <em>her</em> plan is to sneak up on a dragon and murder him in his sleep. Theo looks absolutely terrified, which she expected, but says he will help, which she didn’t.</p><p>Theo doesn’t have any weapons, but he has a rope, a bit of money, cheese and dried meat, and Taylor has run out of bread.</p><p>She tells him he can come along.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor, and Theo trailing behind her, reaches a village, and Taylor seizes the opportunity to refill their stock of food, and also get Theo a knife. Knives are very useful for things such as cutting bread, or stabbing dragons.</p><p>(A sword would be best, but neither of them has any idea how to get one.)</p><p>They eat, and Taylor tries to explain the intricacies of Rat-Catching to Theo.</p><p>“It’s not like Alchemy, or whatever they teach at the University,” she says between two mouthful of cheese. “Just learning the right airs doesn’t work. You need to actually make one with your instrument, feel in your soul how it connects to the rats. I never actually managed to do it, and I could play the most common ones in my sleep.”</p><p>“It sounds nice,” say Theo, and they finish their meal in silence.</p><p>And then, they head to the inn.</p><p>Here’s the plan: they will buy a pitcher of cheap wine, and ask around about Cawthorn.</p><p>The plan gets them mixed results.</p><p>On the one hand, the waitress has family near Cawthorn, and their daughter Sarah went missing a few weeks ago.</p><p>On the other hand, the wine is incredibly bad.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They resume their journey towards Cawthorn.</p><p>Taylor is slightly nervous. The road they are on is less safe than the one they took before. Apparently, there are bandits.</p><p>Taylor doesn’t like it. Neither does Theo.</p><p>(She set out to kill a dragon, yes, but this is the first time she will face real danger on this journey.)</p><p>(She’s more scared than she thought she would be.)</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Taylor hears voices and, on a whim, she drags Theo to hides in the underbrush on the side of the road.</p><p>She puts a finger on her lips to inform him to hush and, after he nods his understanding, starts crawling as discreetly as she can towards the sounds of conversation.</p><p>There are two men, standing near the remnants of a small merchant carriage. The cargo is strewn across the road, and the horse looks like it would be running away were it not for the wreck trapping it. </p><p>The two men are laughing.</p><p>“Did you see that, Uther? Did you see that?” says one of them, and the other answers with equal excitement. </p><p>“I saw, Leon! It was amazing!”</p><p>There are two other people on the side, an old man and a girl about ten, and the girl is looking at them in helpless anger.</p><p>The old man is crying.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a stick on the ground under Taylor’s hand. Its bark is smooth, cool from staying in the shadows of the trees, and Taylor can feel it warming up under her palm.</p><p>The old man is crying as his livelihood lies in the dirt.</p><p>(It’s not fair.)</p><p>On the other side of the road, there’s a field full of grasshoppers.</p><p>Uther and Leon are still laughing, making fun of the crying man, of the scared horse, of the angry child.</p><p>(Wretched, wasteful <em>sots</em>.)</p><p>Taylor closes her fingers around the stick, feels its shape against her flesh, anticipates its weight when she will pick it up. </p><p>She will pick it up. </p><p>The girl can only stand there, powerless.</p><p>(She knows powerlessness. Powerlessness is Mom and Mister Barnes dying, Dad falling apart, the creeping realization that Emma will never come home.)</p><p>Taylor stands up.</p><p>She can hear her heart beating, and it feels like the stick is pulsing in time with it, like it’s just another limb, just another part of herself, and she swings it, hard and fast.</p><p>The air sings around the wood, and a swarm of locusts descends upon her enemies.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor doesn’t actually <em>hurt</em> Uther and Leon. Not much, at least.</p><p>(No matter how angry she is, she saw them laugh, and be excited, be <em>people</em>. Terrible ones, yes, but Taylor…)</p><p>(Taylor has never really hurt anyone before.)</p><p>Taylor doesn’t <em>hurt</em> Uther and Leon, but she makes sure they run away, and she has the grasshopper eat through the straps of their bags so they have to leave them behind.</p><p>She’s very proud of herself, and Theo cheers from the underbushes.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The carriage was transporting clothes.</p><p>Unfortunately, they don’t have the skills or material to fix it, so they load what they can on the horse, and the old man tells Taylor and Theo to take their pick in what is left.</p><p>Taylor’s dress has seen better days, and she eyes enviously a beautiful black and orange one, but ultimately decides against it, and settles for male clothes instead. More practical for walking.</p><p>Then, she goes through the things Uther and Leon left behind.</p><p>Leon’s bag is mostly full of strange objects Theo recognizes as alchemical artefacts, and Taylor hesitates. Such things can be useful, or valuable, but they have no way of knowing what their purposes are, and she remembers a tale a sailor told Dad, about such a contraption suddenly catching fire and burning a whole village down in flames water cannot smother.</p><p>She buries the whole bag on the side of the road. </p><p>Uther’s bag is more interesting, with some money and a small pot of honey. And that’s without counting the real prize.</p><p>“Oh <em>yes</em>,” Taylor says, and she turns toward Theo with a grin to show off what she found.</p><p>She’s got a sword.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“My father threw me out” Theo says.</p><p>It’s the day after they ran into Uther and Leon, and Taylor is still feeling light from her victory. </p><p>(It’s not quite Rat-Catching, not quite what she was trying to learn, but calling upon the swarm is good enough for her right now.)</p><p>For a second, Theo’s words don’t quite register, and then it feels like she’s been doused in cold water.</p><p>“There’s that man,” Theo continues, “he likes to play with people, and he likes to kill them when he’s done playing. And he’s, he’s very strong, and dangerous, and he keeps escaping when people try to kill <em>him</em> and I, I met him and he didn’t kill me, but he said  he would come back to me in two years and kill everyone close to me and then me, and so my father threw me out and, and I knew he’s not a good man, and that he doesn’t love me very much, but I didn’t think he’d just…”</p><p>Theo stops. He’s crying, and Taylor put an arm around his shoulders.</p><p>“Your father is a sot,” she says, and then, “when we’re done with the children, I’ll help you get rid of the killer.”</p><p>She means it.</p><p>She means every single word.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When they finally reach Cawthorn, it’s already the night.</p><p>Cawthorn looks… weird. Not like the villages Taylor is used to.</p><p>There’s a castle in the middle, but the walls and lesser buildings have been broken, and the only part that still stands is one of the corner towers, round and pierced by small windows and arrowslits.</p><p>There are other buildings, but they look new, temporary, made of wood rather than stone, with only one or two looking like they were made to last. Taylor can even see a few tents.</p><p>She supposes it makes sense, if Ahane Kenta only recently took over Cawthorn, that the buildings housing his men are still unfinished.</p><p>It still looks weird.</p><p>It’s the moment of truth. Her last chance to run away.</p><p><em>Their</em> last chance to run away.</p><p>“You can still go back,” she tells Theo, and he looks so scared he might be sick, but he shakes his head.</p><p>He’s not leaving, and neither is she.</p><p>It’s night, and it looks like most of the Dragon's men are asleep. If they’re lucky, they might manage to sneak the children out without anyone noticing.</p><p>The sword on her back is a reassuring weight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Here’s the plan:</p><p>Theo will scale the tower until he reaches a window on the fourth flour that looks large enough for him to go through. Then, he will get inside, solidly tie his rope to something, and she will use it to scale the wall. Then, they will discreetly find the children, and use the rope to get them outside, before fleeing to safety. </p><p>(Taylor did suggest she should be the one to go first, but a quick test on a tree showed Theo was a better climber.)</p><p>Watching Theo scale the tower is terrifying. </p><p>It’s scary because the gaps between the stones are small enough Theo had to take off his shoes, because he almost slips once or twice, because he is high enough he could die if he falls. </p><p>It’s scary because there is nothing Taylor can do. </p><p>The window is open, and Theo slips inside. A few minutes later, the end of the rope lands before Taylor, and she climbs after him. </p><p>The room looks like a study, with book-covered shelves and a huge, heavy table supporting stacks of a strange material covered in annotations that looks somewhat like parchment, but isn’t. Strangely, the chair is mounted on wheels.</p><p>Taylor has a quick look at the books. They look to be about a very wide range of subjects, from mathematics to children tales and Taylor can’t make out a common theme. She can’t make head nor tail of what is written on the not-parchments.</p><p>They’re about to go looking for the children when the room is drowned in a strange silver light.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a man standing in the door, and he holds something with a long pole in his hand, and the light coming out of it makes him hard to look at.</p><p>Theo hides his eyes with his arm, and Taylor suppresses a groan because no, Theo, letting the enemy out of your sight is a <em>bad idea</em>.</p><p>The man does something, and the light dims to tolerable level as she draws her sword.</p><p>The thing is a halberd, with the light coming out of the head. Probably alchemy.</p><p>Alchemy makes no sense whatsoever, and Taylor doesn’t like it.</p><p>“You gonna fight me?” asks the man, and Taylor clutches her sword harder.</p><p>“Where are the children?” she says as threateningly as she can, and Theo makes an horrified squeak from behind her.</p><p>The man rubs his face with his free hand, muttering something that sounds a lot like <em>not again</em>, and Taylor notices the hand holding the halberd is covered in armor, and that his right eye is a sphere of solid gold.</p><p>“As I said to the people who came before you,” he says, and he sounds… Annoyed. “We didn’t kidnap any children. People have started to come live around Cawthorn, and my wife Theresa agreed to let the younger children stay in the Tower under the supervision of a few older ones so that the parents can focus on… Whatever they do during the day.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p><em>Oh</em>.</p><p>“What… What about the dragon?” asks Theo hesitantly.</p><p>“Theresa is an amazing person,” answers the man, before letting out a sigh. “Listen, there’s obviously been a misunderstanding. Why don’t we go to the kitchen and discuss it around a cup of warm milk?”</p><p>And maybe it’s not the smartest thing to follow him, but if he was Ahane Kenta or one of his men, his reaction would have been a lot more violent, and they <em>did</em> break into his home.</p><p>She exchanges a look with Theo, and agrees.</p><p>It’s only three flights of stairs lower that she realizes the man implied his wife was a dragon.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The man’s name is Colin Wallis and his wife is, in fact, a dragon.</p><p>She’s a very nice dragon. She calls her husband <em>sweetheart</em>, and offers Taylor and Theo honey to put in their milk, and she has scales and fangs bigger than Taylor’s hand.</p><p>She’s also far too big to fit in the kitchen, let alone through the door, but she does anyway.</p><p>She calls them good, and brave. Her husband says they were very brave indeed, but suggests they should make less assumptions and more research in the future.</p><p>They ask how Theo and Taylor came to go together to fight a dragon, and say they’ll take care of Theo’s killer problem.</p><p>They ask Taylor what she wants to do now, and she thinks about Dad.</p><p>She left him all alone.</p><p>“I think I want to go home,” Taylor says.</p><p>(She will come back to help Theo, but she wants to see Dad first.)</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The Wallises give Theo and Taylor matching empty books, with the promise that what would be written in one could be read in the other, and then, in the morning, Mrs Wallis takes her husband and Taylor on her back, and flies all the way back to Taylor’s hometown.</p><p>Mrs Wallis stays in the countryside so the townspeople won’t panic, but Mister Wallis walks Taylor all the way back home.</p><p>Despite the hour, Dad is there, and he holds her tight and cries.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Colin isn’t stupid.</p><p>Knowledge is power. The University has knowledge. The University controls the knowledge and who gets to learn it. The University is powerful.</p><p>The University wants to keep its power.</p><p>Colin isn’t stupid. He knew why the University didn’t want him to invent the Book then, knows why they don’t want him to share it now, understand the reasoning behind those decisions.</p><p>He was part of the University, once, but they cast him aside for petty politics and the ravings of a madman, and he cares little for their wishes now.</p><p>The University is powerful, and Colin made an enemy out of them.</p><p>They won’t go for a frontal assault. They fear Theresa too much for that, and even though Colin’s artificial limbs still hurt him when he keeps them on for too long, they know he can hold his own in a fight, and has the knowledge and skill to prepare a few nasty surprises should it come to it.</p><p>So they went for subtlety instead, for misinformation and rumors assimilating Colin and Theresa to Ahane Kenta and his men, and brave, foolish people fall for it and prove themselves a steady source of inconvenient.</p><p>At least, Miss Hebert and young Mister Anders proved accommodating once their mistake revealed.</p><p>Which reminds him…</p><p>“What are we going to do about the Anders boy?” he asks Theresa.</p><p>“We promised to help him get rid of the killer,” she says.</p><p>“I meant afterwards. We can’t just… Keep him.”</p><p>Theresa shrugs, and wraps a wing around him, and Colin lets himself lean against her.</p><p>“I don’t see why not,” Theresa says.</p><p>Uh.</p><p>“You’re right.”</p><p>They have room.</p>
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